Hey, 2020 fans. I'm Andy Mitchell.

And I'm Sabrina Kohlberg. We're co-hosts of a new show from ABC Audio and Good Morning, America called Pop Culture Moms.

We've been best friends for 20 years and pop culture aficionados for even longer. On Pop Culture Moms, we're taking our obsession with TV and movies to the next level, talking to celebrities, writers, and fellow scholars of pop culture about what we can learn from the fictional moms they love most. We're exploring the comedy and tragedy of what Parenthood is like in real life.

We'd love to play you a clip from our episode with Real Housewives star, Heather Gay. In the episode, Heather talks about how she relates to the Barbie movie and how she herself broke out of the boxes of perfectionism that she was placed in. Here comes the clip. If you like it, I hope you'll click the link in our episode description or search pop culture moms while you're listening and follow the podcast to hear more.

It makes me cry right now because I kept saying, I'm doing this for my daughters to give them options, to give them other ways to do it. And you realize, just like in the movie with America's Prayer, we're doing it for ourselves. Then that's the reward, is to see them develop and become who they are going to be, the people they're going to be without context of a pre-assigned role or a definition of beauty, a definition of success, a definition identity that has been prescribed to a lot of us as women growing up. But for them, they have the independence and freedom to just make their own way. I love that so much. I'll see friends now, and even my fellow housewives, and I'm just like, Hi, Barbie. It's just saying, Hi, Barbie, to women I love. It feels like that's what we're saying. It's like, Barbie can be an astronaut. Barbie can be the president. We have potential that exceeds even our own imaginations.

Did your daughters see Barbie?

Yeah, they saw Barbie. They had full outfits. We cheered and cried together. They're wonderful children. I feel so lucky. They say, Ashley Instagram me yesterday, my oldest, and said, Everything I have, I owe to you. I'm just like, oh. They have a consciousness and awareness of it because all of their friends are still living the same trajectory life, and we've stepped off that conveyor belt. By Good Fortune and Housewives and the Book and all of these other things, and mostly the business, we're able to step off that conveyor belt with success and celebration and moving up in the world. But a lot of women with children to step off that conveyor belt, it doesn't have that same benefit. I want to make sure that it's not just the wealth and the money and the fame that has made our lives so fulfilling and great. It's everything that they have, they have because I just told them it was okay for them to step off the conveyor belt and to choose a different way.

I think that's the best thing because probably every child at some point struggles with wanting your parents to accept you as you are. But it means a lot God, I bet, to your daughters that you have gone through a transformation. You have faced judgment. You have found self-acceptance in a community that wasn't very accepting of who you are. I think it's very relatable to them that everything maybe that you're going preach to them is something that you've lived.

Well, it's been freeing as a mom because I, growing up, thought that moms had to be perfect. Like, cry in the shower, don't cry in front of your kids. But I found that the magic of My relationship with my kids has come through that vulnerability. Me being an idiot on television, me getting ripped apart on social media, it gives them permission to mess up, too. And so I think that as moms, we should embrace when we screw up. It's like, we're teaching our kids that you can be an incredible person and mother and still totally screw up. That makes it easier for me to parent authentically because I recognize that there's learning and the vulnerability.

Again, that was a clip from the podcast, Pop Culture Moms. You can find the full episode and more pop culture moms wherever you get your podcasts.